This event is presented in person at the Center for New Music. Masks are required for all in attendance. Attendees are required to be fully vaccinated as the ensemble will not be able to wear masks during the performance. Audience capacity is reduced, so purchase your tickets early.
The 5 stalwart friends comprising Splinter Reeds are about to co-inhabit the same room for the first time since Feb. 2020, and we’d love for you to join us. Our program features works by Paula Matthusen, Niloufar Nourbakhsh, Chris Pitsiokos, and Laura Cetilia which emphasize the interactions of bodies in spaces and sounds in space.
Chris Pitsiokos – Four Unisons (2019)
Nilofar Nourbakhsh – Firing Squad (2018)
Laura Cetilia – Adrift (2019)
Paula Matthusen – Antenna Studies (2018)
Splinter Reeds is the West Coast’s first reed quintet, comprising five innovative musicians with a shared passion for new music. The ensemble is committed to presenting top tier performances of today’s best contemporary composition, showcasing the vast possibilities of the reed quintet, commissioning new works, and collaborating with fellow musicians and artists.
As a relatively new chamber music genre, the reed quintet is an evolutionary detour from the traditional woodwind quintet with the advantages of a more closely related instrument family. With approximately 20 professional reed quintets worldwide, Splinter Reeds is explicitly dedicated to cutting edge composition and expanding the existing reed quintet repertoire through the development of new works by emerging and established composers.
Splinter Reeds formed in 2013 with the coming together of five colleagues highly active in multiple facets of the Bay Area’s vibrant music scene: Kyle Bruckmann (oboe), Bill Kalinkos (clarinet), David Wegehaupt (saxophone), Jeff Anderle (bass clarinet), and Dana Jessen (bassoon). The sum of their wide ranges of experience – in settings including free jazz, improvisation, electronic music, pop, punk and metal as well as classical – has enabled them to rapidly zero in on a distinct aesthetic identity.
Recent concert engagements have included performances at Chicago’s Constellation, the Mondavi Performing Arts Center, Berkeley Art Museum, Switchboard Music Festival, FeNAM (Sacramento), April in Santa Cruz Festival of Contemporary Music, Center for New Music (San Francisco), and the Presidio Sessions series. Additionally, they have held residencies at Stanford, Chapman, Northwestern, UC-Berkeley, UC-Davis and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. The ensemble has received grant awards from Chamber Music America, New Music USA, the Alice M. Ditson Fund at Columbia University, the Zellerbach Family Foundation, and InterMusic SF.